


Working Through the Cold

by Callaeidae3



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Keith (Voltron) Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 11:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18498331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callaeidae3/pseuds/Callaeidae3
Summary: BTHB: Working through the coldKeith and Pidge are sent on an Intel gathering mission, but the weather quickly gets the better of them.





	Working Through the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by @cuivienengazer.
> 
> Set sometime S1~early S2

Crouched in the shadow of an abandoned base, Keith stands guard and Pidge shivers. According to Coran, this base might contain data on what planets the Galra Empire have taken control over and what resources this planets offer them. A necessary risk, Shiro had said when Keith had pointed out the snowstorm sweeping the mountain. It is, after all, a risk that offers them the chance to learn what they need to know before approaching planets to talk alliances and liberation.

Keith had thought it was a good idea - everyone had thought it was a good idea - but now, standing in what has to be negative temperatures and a wind chill that somehow manages to cut through his and Pidge's space suits even when they're not standing directly in the wind, Keith's adamant that visiting the base during the snowstorm is definitely not a good idea.

With a grumble, Pidge punches the side of the control panel she's hunched over. Her hands keep slipping and the wires are stiff with the cold. At this rate, they'll never get the door open to get inside the base, and it's starting to get on both their nerves.

"Are you guys inside the base yet?" Hunk asks over the comms.

Keith huffs a breath. It fogs up his visor, temporarily blurring Pidge's figure into a jumble of green, black and white. "Th-the panel's frozen over. We got the door open a minute ago but Pidge is having s-some difficulty with the wires."

"With the cold, Keith!" Pidge snaps. "Not the wires."

The comms break into a noisy clamour of sounds before clearing. Keith and Pidge wait to see if whoever spoke will repeat what they said, but they don't. Pidge is too busy getting her fingers to work a screw loose on what Keith assumes is the cover on the emergency door open button to ask. Keith considers asking himself, but his mind's too numb to get the words out.

Hunk's voice comes in. "Hello? You guys there?"

"Yeah," Keith says.

"I just asked how long you guys think you're gonna be. Shiro's worried about base security finding you trying to break in and Coran's having second thoughts about sending you two down into that weather."

"How cold is it exactly?"

"Well, there's a monitor up on the screen here but it's in Altean, so I dunno. Pidge, maybe we oughta log some Earth conversions into the system sometime. You can do that, right?"

Pidge's only answer is a hiss of frustration, but it's not directed at Hunk.

"I'll take that as a no?"

"She's a little busy, Hunk," Keith says. "We're trying to get into the base as fast as we can, so...uh, maybe try not to distract her."

Hunk hastily apologises. "Yeah, sorry, about that. Hey, Keith? You okay?"

"Uh...yeah? Aside from being cold, I mean."

"Nah, I mean...you're slurring a bit. You holding up okay?"

""m fine."

"I'm just checking. My family's from Samoa, yeah? We ain't exactly adapted to the cold. At the Garrison it wasn't so bad, y'know, Arizona desert and all, but you take me anywhere with mountains and snow and forests and whatnot and brrrr....yeah, no. Count me out."

Keith raises an eyebrow, watching Pidge fumble with the screw through half-closed eyes. "Your point?"

"You grew up in a desert, Keith. Spent a year - oh wait, it was longer than that, wasn't it? - anyways, you spent over a year living out in the middle of it before we came out to space. Also, Red Paladin... fire? You're not exactly adapted to that snowstorm."

"Neither am I," Pidge mutters.

"Yeah, but you're probably able to hold out longer than Keith is. So what I'm saying is, if you don't think you'll be able to get inside soon, come back to the Castle. Shiro's orders."

"Fine," Keith says, and Pidge has no choice but to agree.

The comms go quiet, leaving them to their work. Thankfully Lance and Allura are off on a separate mission or else this easy going quiet wouldn't be possible.

"Keith, can you give me a hand with this?"

It takes him longer than it should to respond. Pidge throws him an impatient look over her shoulder.

With a quick, almost useless, glance around them, Keith confirms that there's nothing and no one currently sneaking up on them and sheathes his sword. The blade disappears in a flash of red that hurts his eyes a little, but Keith dismisses it and lets his Bayard dissolve.

He kneels beside Pidge in the snow and stares at the control panel. "Right, so...sorry, what is it you wanted me to do again?"

She jabs a finger at the screw that won't budge and frowns at him. Keith blinks at her, then at the screw and the confusion clears.

"Right...sorry."

Somehow that apology earns him a concerned, narrowed-eye stare that he mistakes for a glare. Keith grimaces and gets to work on getting the screw unscrewed.

It's harder than it looks. No wonder Pidge was having trouble with it. His own fingers are too cold to make any progress though, and he finds himself doing worse an effort than Pidge's numbed, tired fingers at it.

"Hey, Keith. Can you look at me for a sec?"

"Hang on. I just gotta look at the screw."

"Keith."

"The screw...it....it needs looking at, so I...."

Two gloved hands land on his helmet and turn his head to look at their owner. Pidge squints through both visors at him. One hand moves to grab something from her belt, and then there's a flashlight shining into his eyes. Keith stares past it at Pidge's expression, trying to decipher the strange concentration he sees there.

"I-is there something wr-rong with my face?" he asks, and now he hears it. Hunk was right. He is slurring.

"Nothing is wrong with your face," Pidge says, turning the flashlight off but her eyes still locked on his.

Keith laughs. "Well, ain't that a relief." He has no idea what he's saying. Clearing his throat, he glances at the control panel and shrugs. "Guess we leave it unscrewed? I mean....not unscrewed. The screw..."

Something in Pidge's expression shifts, and then all of a sudden her hands are wrapped around his arm and he's being pulled up. Startled, he overbalanced and lands on his face in the snow, his other arm not responding and instead curling awkwardly in a way that has his wrist bent and his fingers bent at weird angles. He gazes at them stupidly, wondering if they're broken, but then Pidge is hauling him up and talking about a castle and he can't remember what he'd just been thinking about.

"Why didn't you say something?" Pidge mutters, slinging Keith's arm around her shoulders.

Keith slumps against her, dazed. "Huh? What say?"

He can't make much sense of the sounds she says. The comms are crackling, making Keith's head hurt. He briefly wonders if the rest of him is hurt just like his head, only he can't feel it because of how numb his body has become.

It doesn't make sense. He was fine just before, right? He hasn't been shivering since Pidge opened the control panel door.

Too tired to think, Keith lets his mind go blank. He's aware that he should be helping Pidge is getting him to stand - it's his own two legs not cooperating - but somehow he can't find the willpower. Before he can stop himself, his head drops onto his chest and his whole body sags.

He feels alarmed, fully. Something's wrong. It's too late a realisation, though. The cold has set into his muscles too quick. He zones out, comes back to himself, and there's one hearts stopping moment where he thinks that his hands are blackened with frostbite.

"You have gloves on," Pidge reassures him.

Keith groans. Had he said that out loud?

"C'mon, I can help you walk but you're heavy and pretty much a dead weight and I can't lift you up like this. Help me out here, Keith."

He's not sure how they do it. Somehow they successfully get to their feet, after several minutes of failed attempts and collapsing back into the snow. Keith's knees threaten to buckle but Pidge holds him firm against her side. She kicks the control panel door shut behind them and exhales sharply.

"C'mon," she says. "Let's get back to Green before you freeze to death."

_You're exaggerating_ , he thinks, but he doesn't voice it. Of course she knows she's exaggerating. That phrase is most commonly used in that sense and not literally.

They trudge through the snow, to a fuzzy green patch of snow waiting for them over the other side of the slope. At some point Keith's legs stop working and he's manoeuvred onto Pidge's back. It's getting harder to stay awake, and now, with all his weigh supported and his body no longer listening to him, Keith decides he may as well just give in to it. He's too exhausted to put up a fight anyway.

He loses consciousness, dips back into reality long enough to feel himself being laid down on the floor of the Green Lion's cockpit, and then he's out again.

 

* * *

 

 

Keith had thought she'd been joking about the possibility of him freezing to death. She'd said it again, over to comms in the cockpit, but Keith had been too out of it to understand his condition.

The first thing he hears and sees when he wakes, though, tells him she most definitely wasn't joking.

The hum of the heat lamp above him is constant, comforting, lulling. When he opens his eyes, he sees many concerned faces crowd his vision before someone tells them to all to step back and give him space.

"Hey," murmurs the black and white blob that replaces them. It takes Keith's mind a whole to register the blob as Shiro. "You with us?"

"Hnnngh?"

"Just seeing how awake you are. You've been out a fair while."

"'s that why're y'all lookin' at me?"

Hunk appears behind Shiro. "Yeah, and because you look terrible."

Keith curls his fingers into the blankets wrapped around him and sighs. "S'rry...for being...for lookin' terr'...terrible...."

Something shifts beside him at his voice, snuggles closer. "You better be sorry."

"Hnnn....sorry...."

He wonders why Pidge is hugging him, especially if he's lying down in bed, but it's too much effort to think straight. He's exhausted. His bones ache and he doesn't even have the strength to then his head to see the fresh stream of tears tracking down Pidge's cheeks.

A hand weights on his shoulder, familiar. "Rest."

Keith forces his eyes open, trying to remember when he closed them, to see Shiro withdraw his hand and then pull the blankets further up over his shoulders. A moment later, Keith's vision blurs and Shiro returns to being a blob of black and white.

His mind slips back into sleep soon after.

 

 


End file.
